Gallery: Medevac day lifts off

EATC, a partnership of several European countries sharing their military transport aircraft capacity, saw its air medical evacuation duties gradually lifting up and reaching over more than 15,000 transported patients. According to Major Colotti, EATC spokesperson, this was reason to organize the first Aeromedical Evacuation Day, which was attended by 100 representatives of member nations at Eindhoven Air Base, the Netherlands, in late 2023.

Visiting aircraft included an Airbus A330 MRTT of the Multinational MRTT Unit (MMU), which had six intensive care unit (ICU) stations onboard, with all essential medical support means. Furthermore, the aircraft had a capacity of 16 medium- and low-care units (MCUs/LCUs) for less critical patients.

The French Air Force (FAF) was also present with an A330 MRTT ‘Phenix’. According to FAF Intensivist Candice Pierrou, a crewmember of the FAF’s Morphée air evac program for intensive care patients, there is always one aircraft available that can be ready for a medical mission within 24 hours. The aircraft is able to have six high intensive care patients and eight that need medium to low medical care, while the back cabin can place up to 88 ambulatory patients. “Our Morphée air evac team consists of 10 persons, being two intensivists, two flight surgeons and six nurses, of which two are civilian,” Pierrou explained. High-care patients must be in a stable condition for the necessary flight time, which can go up to 12 hours.

Italy was at Eindhoven with a C-130J containing aircraft transit isolators (ATIs) to isolate patients from their environment.

A German Airbus A400M, which can contain six patient transport units (PTUs), was shown with four high-care (IC) and two low-care units.

For transport of one or two patients, EATC makes use of a contracted civil Challenger 605 air ambulance from Luxembourg Air Rescue.

The static display further showed a CH-53 combat search and rescue (CSAR) helicopter, which can be used to make the connection between the battlefield and the airports where the larger, fixed-wing assets operate from. German Flight Nurse Stephan Wagner explained that the team can be deployed on personal recovery (PR) missions to extract patients out of hostile areas, which may also include strong evasive helicopter maneuvers to respond to hostile threats. With their special training they can still take care of the patient and the medical equipment the person is attached to.

There were four European countries’ aircraft on display as well as a multinational NATO craft. Hosted in the Netherlands, there were fixed-wing planes from France, Germany, Luxembourg and Italy, as well as a German helicopter, covering a range of options for medevac missions.